Page 1 of 52
1
2
3
11
51
... LastLast
  1. #1
    Stood in the Fire Eilt's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    464

    Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    We should have one too, right laser chickens?

    Spec:
    Talent Calculator - Balance

    If you need to apply the unglyphed version of IS, replace the IS glyph with the Starfall glyph.

    There are 3 available talent points to spend with this base spec and you must fill them out based on what you need…

    If you need Mana regen put one in OoC and 2 in intensity. There is also the option of removing two points from imp MF and filling out Moonglow. Yes moonglow is one of the worst mana regen talents, but giving up imp MF is barely noticeable in terms of DPS which makes it a good place to move points. If you need further mana regen you will remove points from iIS or CF to fill out the other mana regen talents. I would drop iIS first since the pushback from CF is very nice, but if you are having serious mana issues losing some haste would also help that.

    If you do not need mana regen you must decide between Typhoon w/ Gale Winds and Brambles. Brambles is more single target DPS assuming your treants live, while if your guild is AE heavy the extra damage from Gale Winds and even the knockback from Typhoon (On fights like XT-002) are very nice (and yes, very situational). Pick the one that best suits your play style and your guilds play style.

    Stats:

    The hit cap with Heroic Presence (Alliance Only) is 236. Otherwise you need to have 263 hit rating to be capped. Since iFF applies the hit debuff (if no spriest is there) there is no use in gearing for that extra 3% to hit, so sitting at 10% (9 for ally) then adding in our 4% from talents and 3% from iFF/Misery this is all the hit you will need.

    Once hit capped you want to focus to make sure and hit the haste soft cap, then focusing on spellpower and crit. Stat order would be something like this:
    Hit cap --> Haste to 401 --> Spellpower --> Crit (to soft cap)--> Haste (over cap) --> Crit (over cap) --> Int --> Spirit

    The crit soft cap, at some point with raid buffs and raid debuffs on a mob, at a certain level of crit you have a 100% chance to crit with starfire. At this point crit loses a little value (much as Haste loses value when the GCD caps wrath cast time at 1.0s). The haste soft cap is the same for everyone, but the crit cap depends on buffs/debuffs on the mob and how much Int you have. (Credit to Hamlet from <Juggernaut> US-Mal'Ganis) Using the formula [1575.5 - Int/3], assuming no 2t8 and all major debuffs are up on the mob (excluding the moonkin getting a Focus Magic buff), will give you the crit rating you need to cap it.

    Follow this guideline to help you gem (assuming you have already hit the hit and hast caps), most sockets should be pure spellpower, if the socket bonus is worth it for a yellow slot use a Potent Ametrine ( if the bonus is +5 SP or more I use this gem to pick it up). For the meta you will need two blue gems so go with two Purified Twilight Opals for blue sockets and make sure to look for a good +SP bonus to use them on.

    Enchants:
    Head: 30 spellpower/20 crit (Kirin Tor revered)
    Shoulders: 24 spellpower/15 crit (Sons of Hodir exalted)
    Back - 23 haste
    Chest - 10 stats
    Wrists - 30 spellpower
    Gloves - 28 spellpower
    Leggings - 50 spellpower/20 spirit (spellpower/stam equivalent)*
    Boots – Tuskaar’s Vitality
    Weapon - 63 spellpower to a 1H, or 81 spellpower to a staff

    *There are a few out there who will use stamina enchants on the legs for fights where you need a certain level of HP. This enchant is one of the cheapest places to pick up a little extra stam. You can also consider a few stam gems instead of the SP/Spi ones in blue sockets to get to the level. If you don’t need the extra HP for a specific encounter stick with the spellpower/spirit.

    Consumables:

    Flask of the Frost Wyrm and Fish Feast (or another 46 SP food). If you use a DPS increasing pot make sure you use a Speed potion as it is an increase over Wild Magic. Make sure you use it during an eclipse to get the most SFs in, with the increase crit chance. If possible combine it with a heroism/bloodlust for maximum SF spamminess.

    Rotation:

    The rotation is pretty simple to get the hang of, but mastering it can take some time. The first priority is to ensure iFF is applies to the mob, since the duration is 5 minutes applying this on the pull will cost you very little (if any DPS).
    After that there is a system of DoT management and attempting to proc eclipse. About DoTs:
    Insect Swarm and Moonfire need to be up as much as possible. Refresh them when they fall off unless it will cost you your last SF crit.

    Personal opinion on clipping: Glyphed MF takes ~3 ticks to outweigh a regular MF. If you have to move and refreshing MF after it has had at least 3 ticks will lessen the chance you have to reapply it during an eclipse, refresh it. On Insect swarm, any time I have to move I refresh it after I use Typhoon. Mana is not an issue for me, and I would much rather have the DoTs rolling so I do not need to use eclipse time on refreshing them. I know you all probably want to scream that someone is advocating clipping DoTs, but unless someone can convince me what is so wrong with it I see no reason not to do it.

    On Eclipse:

    Start the fight (after DoTs) casting wrath and trying to proc a Lunar Eclipse. Hopefully you get a proc quick enough and can extend your MF duration so that you have to reapply it less. During the Lunar eclipse you will only be casting Starfire, so any one use haste trinkets or speed pots should be used at this time to attempt to get as many Starfires off during the extra crit chance. After LE you will have to cast Starfire until it crits again and a Solar Eclipse procs. During a solar eclipse you cast nothing but wrath (and DoTs as mentioned above). The rest of the fight will be a switch off between proccing eclipses and spamming one of our two nukes while trying to keep DoTs up. Yes, sometimes you don’t proc eclipse immediately, and sometimes you have to refresh DoTs without procing, it happens, deal with it.

    On treants and starfall:

    If you will only get 1 treant cast off save it for just before heroism (if treants come out after heroism is cast they will not get the buff, so they have to be cast before the heroism!) If you have time to get more than 1 treant cast off that will be more of a DPS gain than a single cast during heroism.

    Use starfall on every CD, I usually start a fight with it if there is no good time for AE damage, and then use it on every CD after. It is a single target DPS gain using it, so there is no reason not to take this talent and as long as you are not in danger of pulling extra mobs, there is no reason not to use it on CD.

    As a side note, make sure you get the SquawkandAwe addon (or some other timer that you prefer) for watching your DoTs and eclipse timers, it is a huge help and raiding without it is a mistake.





  2. #2

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Seems like sound advice across the board, but I'm not quite sure who you are making this guide for? I think it needs more teaspoon for it to be a newbie guide and experienced moonkins usually know all this (or should anyways). But a nice write up

  3. #3
    Pit Lord Alski's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    Earthquake rubble
    Posts
    2,380

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    he probably thought this board needed a moonkin guide since theres already one for the other specs

  4. #4
    The Patient Leafre's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Pécs, Hungary
    Posts
    261

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Well, a druid without OoC, idk
    I am a Leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.

  5. #5

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Leafre
    Well, a druid without OoC, idk
    You're allowed to read what he writes as well, there are 3 free talent points.

  6. #6
    Deleted

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    @OP:

    I am by no means a professional moonkin. It is something that ive begun playing with just before 3.1 (because Naxx gave a lot offspec gear, and because i dont like kitty DPS, and because i suck as a tree :P). With dual spec, i find it quite enjoyable to be a boomkin in the ol' heroics ive seen so many times before, and the rare time where we just need one tank in raids (although i am still so unaccustomed to being a boomkin that its quite stressfull to DPS in raids).

    My boomkin stats are, off the top of my head, 19xx spell power, 9% hit (in the character screen) and some 20.xx% crit. I dont remember my haste. In a good, classic VH heroic run, i would usually do 3000+ DPS, but i don't have any reliable numbers from a raid yet.

    Anyways, background story over, i wanted to talk a bit about rotations. I find that while wrath > eclipse > starfire is theoretically higher damage, starfire > eclipse > wrath is a lot more *steady* damage. I can go for a long time, through several wrath crits, without proccing eclipse for starfire, and that lowers my damage quite a bit. On the other hand, i realise the value of quick wrath casts to proc eclipse faster, but i generally dont have to do more than a few starfire casts before i will get a crit, and an eclipse proc.

    I dont know if you could call my crit low, but i saw positive results by this rotation:

    MF > Starfire > Eclipse > IS > Wrath > Refresh IS > Wrath repeat. It works wonderfull for me that by the time the second IS runs out, the iCD is over and i can start my rotation over. If i do wraths to proc eclipse, i can go a long, long time without a proc, which is a dent in my DPS - this rotation allows me for a more steady damage output.

  7. #7
    Stood in the Fire Eilt's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    464

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    That probably works for 5 mans, because you lack a lot of the raiding buffs that make your wrath crit enough to deal with the 60% RNG to get the lunar eclipse. Not to mention when you get into upper level 25 man raids you just have way too much haste to count solely on a solar rotation. Once you are over 400 haste, talents and raid buffs will start making you clip the GCD with NG up which eliminates the ability to use the pre-queue system which then means your latency is creating non-casting time which will reduce your DPS.

    So there is nothing wrong with using the solar eclipse in 5 mans or lower gear, but as you continue raiding the lunar eclipse is the rotation you will want to use.

    And yes, I just figured all the other specs had a guide we deserve one too. WTB sticky 8)

  8. #8

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Qieth
    @OP:

    I am by no means a professional moonkin. It is something that ive begun playing with just before 3.1 (because Naxx gave a lot offspec gear, and because i dont like kitty DPS, and because i suck as a tree :P). With dual spec, i find it quite enjoyable to be a boomkin in the ol' heroics ive seen so many times before, and the rare time where we just need one tank in raids (although i am still so unaccustomed to being a boomkin that its quite stressfull to DPS in raids).

    My boomkin stats are, off the top of my head, 19xx spell power, 9% hit (in the character screen) and some 20.xx% crit. I dont remember my haste. In a good, classic VH heroic run, i would usually do 3000+ DPS, but i don't have any reliable numbers from a raid yet.

    Anyways, background story over, i wanted to talk a bit about rotations. I find that while wrath > eclipse > starfire is theoretically higher damage, starfire > eclipse > wrath is a lot more *steady* damage. I can go for a long time, through several wrath crits, without proccing eclipse for starfire, and that lowers my damage quite a bit. On the other hand, i realise the value of quick wrath casts to proc eclipse faster, but i generally dont have to do more than a few starfire casts before i will get a crit, and an eclipse proc.

    I dont know if you could call my crit low, but i saw positive results by this rotation:

    MF > Starfire > Eclipse > IS > Wrath > Refresh IS > Wrath repeat. It works wonderfull for me that by the time the second IS runs out, the iCD is over and i can start my rotation over. If i do wraths to proc eclipse, i can go a long, long time without a proc, which is a dent in my DPS - this rotation allows me for a more steady damage output.
    What your seeing is the benefit of a 100% proc rate for a Starfire crit over a 60% proc rate for a Wrath crit. If you don't remember your haste, then I'm guessing you don't pay much attention to that statistic and it's vital necessity to our overall damage. Even with the rotation you mentioned, you will need haste. The rotation your currently using is basically the Solar rotation.

    This is used by most Moonkins for a moving fight. I guarantee you you will do more damage if you do the Lunar eclipse rotation with higher haste at your current level of play. What we saw in 5man's and 10/25man Naxx was a lot of boss' that didn't require us to move [much]. Thus, a stand-and-cast Lunar eclipse rotation is optimal. Fights where your having to move a lot tend to show better numbers where you simply cast a Starfire, with your crit being heavy, and proc Solar eclipse whilst running around, occasionally stopping to wrath.

    Bottom line, if your going to continue down the path your going, you will want to get up to the soft haste cap of 400 haste rating, and push crit without sacrificing spellpower (as crit is a coefficient of spellpower). If you wish to do more damage from 5man's to 25man naxx in the future, then start itemizing for Lunar rotation, about 500-600 haste rating and about the crit percentage your at currently. Again, in no way do you want to compromise your spellpower for these attributes. Both haste and crit are indirect coefficients to your spellpower's benefit.

  9. #9
    Deleted

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    A few considerations when you comment my post above:

    - Our guild only does 10 man raids
    - We are 12/14 Ulduar
    - My gear is offspec rolls (4/5 T8, 3 pieces from Ulduar 10 and the rest being mostly epics)
    - I am our MT, so i usually wont be boomkin in raids, unless i decide to bring to other tanks for the raid

    I wonder if its even possible to achieve 600 haste, 20% crit, 1900 SP from 10 man gear.

  10. #10

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    i raid boomkin and if u have enough crit u do not need any Regen talent....as for rotation assuming theres no spriest drop FF first...but i IS MF wrath spam for eclipse starfire spam till eclipse is over once eclipse is gone our dots are off reapply and wrath spam again the ICD on eclipse will be up once those dots are about to wear off so i fire off wrath till they are just wearing off reapply and by the time my wrath hits the boss their both back up and i can start the starfire spam..but as a whole u need about 30% crit raid buffed in order to not have a regen talent...as for starfire glyph its kinda useless cause of the way my rotation is anyway so i just replaced it with the 20% damage starfall i may end swapping that for the fast cd starfall glyph but i need to test it out..and as op says while in a eclipse rotation don't worry about ur dots if they fall off 17k starfires are > 3k worth of dots edit::also imp moonfire is a waste of points especially if u have moonfire glyph a 300 moonfire crit isn't gonna give u any kind of numbers even if u trying to use it for natures grace its not worth it much rather have the 3 points into moonglow cause moonfire is expensive

  11. #11

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    I'm not going to lie, I disagree with half of what you just said. You should always put up IFF. Most of the time, it gets put up because of the 3% crit, not the 3% hit. The only time I condone not putting it up is on quick trash or if another druid has decided to put it up. As far as your crit? 30% passive? because non-passive, sitting too much more then 25% will probably cause a DPS loss based off what I can see your stats balancing at. Dropping the Starfire glyph urked me considerably as it is most definitely not useless. Almost every Boomkin guide will tell you to use MF/SF glyphs. This is not a joke, nor a global prank. The numbers have spoken for themselves on their benefits. The Starfall 20% damage glyph is < the Starfall -30s glyph. If your trying to fit in the Starfall glyph, drop the IS glyph imo.

  12. #12
    Deleted

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Qieth
    A few considerations when you comment my post above:

    - Our guild only does 10 man raids
    - We are 12/14 Ulduar
    - My gear is offspec rolls (4/5 T8, 3 pieces from Ulduar 10 and the rest being mostly epics)
    - I am our MT, so i usually wont be boomkin in raids, unless i decide to bring to other tanks for the raid

    I wonder if its even possible to achieve 600 haste, 20% crit, 1900 SP from 10 man gear.
    Definitely possible. In my mix of offspec balance gear (mainly all Naxx 10 with a few resto pieces such as rings)I have approximately 18-19% crit and almost 500 haste with 1900 spell power. In Ulduar 10 gear (note, not the tier as it would lose too much to poorly itemized spirit) those figures should be obtainable.

    I also completely agree with some of the other posters that your rotation is poorly thought out. Improved Faire Fire should always be put up, if only to maximise your own crit and reduce the targets armor. It only takes 1.5 seconds out of your dps time every 5 minutes - hardly a massive penalty.

    Glyphing is something that is rather flexible and people can adjust. I for one will never glyph into Insect Swarm as I have too many memories of having to spec IS/Resto for Brutallus and I feel that -3% chance to hit is a huge amount really though I do like my Starfall not pulling other groups and doing bigger numbers. With that said, the Moonfire / Starfire glyphs really are essential.

    As others have also pointed out, a Lunar rotation tends to be far more successful as over 400 haste if you have any additional haste buffs during a raid you will clip the GCD on Wrath.

  13. #13

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    well guides are not experience...raiding and seeing what works is y i do what i do and what doesn't also imp ff doesn't stack with totem of wrath and IS is a good bit of damage no way i would drop it..on hardmodes theres a lot of moving and u need ur dot damage other wise ur just dead weight

  14. #14
    Deleted

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by hawtgirlcoww
    well guides are not experience...raiding and seeing what works is y i do what i do and what doesn't also imp ff doesn't stack with totem of wrath and IS is a good bit of damage no way i would drop it..on hardmodes theres a lot of moving and u need ur dot damage other wise ur just dead weight
    While it's true that you have to adapt the way you play to what you do best, it's also true that the basis of optimizing your dps is to see what's the theoretical highest, and then see what you are doing wrong/what choices you will do to adapt to the situations you are actually seeing in game. Just saying "i'm better doing this" means that you aren't thinking at all about how to get better or look for things you are missing.

    As for iFF and ToW not stacking, that's just false. ToW is a debuff on the target, iFF is a personal buff gained through talent. (the second part of the sentence being enough to make it stack with everything, but hey, 2 arguments for the price of 1).

    @Spiritus : There is an intelligent case to be made for dropping the SF glyph to take the Starfall one (-CD, not +dmg of course) actually, it basically revolves around MF uptime and how you handle it. 1 MF per Eclipse cycle rotation means you want the SF glyph to optimize MF uptime. 2 MF per eclipse (at end of proc and end of iCD) sacrifices a GCD for higher MF uptime (though lower uptime during Eclipse) which is almost equivalent in terms of dps. Keeping the SF glyph would lead to either clipping or being forced back to 1-MF, so people using that rotation turn to the Starfall -CD glyph.
    They have a small dps loss from the 2-MF rotation and a bigger increase though using Starfall at every GCD (and it is true that there are many fights where Starfall is going to hit more than 1 target).

    Which would cause me to say that for dps purposes, the two core glyphs are IS and MF, with a choice between SF and Starfall which will alter your rotation.

  15. #15

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    well i was under the impression that they didn't stack but i guess ill have to put it up more often and the glyph of focus is really nice for alot of fights like yog -any cause constrictors and crushers spwn on top of each other often and poping starfall and getting aoe in between the group of them helps keep them under managment ......not many hardmodes allow u to just stand there and spam starfire and in those instances witch there are many passive damage is really nice to hav...on a side note 4 peice set bonus sux ballz especially when ur in mid starfire spam and it procs its ok when ur on eclipse but other wise....

  16. #16
    Stood in the Fire Eilt's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    464

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    No one is arguing you get Patchwerk like fights in Ulduar but if you are choosing Glyph of Focus over Glyph of Starfall you are doing it wrong.

    Glyph of Focus - reduce radius by 50% and increase damage by 20%
    Glyph of Starfall - Reduce CD by 30 seconds

    For easy math lets say Starfall does 1000 damage and your fight lasts just over 3 minutes (allowing 2 full starfalls to complete).

    With glyph of focus you do 1200 damage each starfall totaling 2400 damage

    With Glyph of starfall you get 3 Starfalls off netting you 3000 damage.

    Where I come from 3000 > 2400 but I will be the first to admit we do some things backwards here in the US....however, this one SHOULD be universally true...

    The only time Glyph of Focus would be better would be if the fight was going to last under 60 seconds, meaning you only get ONE Starfall cast off during the fight. And I have not encountered anything in Ulduar that is that short...although to be fair I have not encountered Algalon yet, but I doubt that fight will take 60 seconds

    As Dje said, and I mentioned in my OP IS/MF are pretty standard, for any raiding moonkin your choice is between Starfall and Starfire. (You can make an argument for not taking IS if your guild wants the -hit debuff from IS, but it is still a DPS loss which is why it is not mentioned as an option).

  17. #17

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    If your having doubts, read <a href="http://www.themoonkinrepository.com/...2336">this</a>. There are some that input about Starfall glyph being superior to IS glyph; but, only on a specific situation and very little I might add. If your running 2 moonfires during Eclipse then the SF glyph is for you. Check the numbers for yourself.

  18. #18

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    do any of u got problems with mana (balance droods) is good to put in dreamstate? or intensity is better?
    -also ..do brambles worth it for treants dmg or should we consider it more pvp than pve ?
    Lightwell! It's gewd!

  19. #19
    Deleted

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    I am sorry if it wasn't clear from my initial post, but i was actually poking around for boomkin tips - not having my throat ripped out by ragers.

    Quote Originally Posted by Miatela
    I also completely agree with some of the other posters that your rotation is poorly thought out. Improved Faire Fire should always be put up, if only to maximise your own crit and reduce the targets armor. It only takes 1.5 seconds out of your dps time every 5 minutes - hardly a massive penalty.
    I never said that i didn't use FF - please dont assume things on my behalf. But in terms of mentioning a rotation, theres no point in me mentioning that i do FF at the beginning of a fight, is there?

    EDIT: 355 haste on my oomkin.

  20. #20

    Re: Balance Druids – The Moonkin Guide

    Quote Originally Posted by Shonubi
    do any of u got problems with mana (balance droods) is good to put in dreamstate? or intensity is better?
    -also ..do brambles worth it for treants dmg or should we consider it more pvp than pve ?
    I would suggest popping back over to your original thread. This is mainly discussing the basiscs/specifics of Moonkin PvE. If you have individual questions about yourself specifically, feel free to make a new thread. I would also suggest providing an armory link.

    That being said, Intensity is generally the highest value of MP5 we can recieve through talents. I say generally because there are select cases where this isn't true, though very rarely. Don't worry about that last comment as much as remember to fill in Intensity to 3/3, OoC 1/1, and Moonglow 1/1. That should do the trick on your mana regen. If your still having issues, then you can revert back to Intensity 3/3, OoC 1/1, and Moonglow 3/3 (removing points from Improved Moonfire). If that is still not enough, you will have to do a combination of sacrificing damage talents to fill in Dreamstate and getting new gear. It would also allude to your crit rating not being high enough (and/or intellect).

    One more point to make, you should try reading the whole OP first before asking such a question as most of what I said was already answered. Again, reply in your thread you originally posted to minimize clutter in this one. I will be glad to respond further.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •